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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND WATERAmerica, arrived in 1988. It thrived because it had no competition fromnative plants, particularly the Blue Water Lily that had disappeared.The nature of agriculture around the lake began to change after1975. By 1995, small farms had given way to several square kilometresof irrigated horticulture in large units, with output (flowersand vegetables) air-freighted to Europe. The cultivated area haddoubled by the start of the twenty-first century, and this land usechange brought a tenfold rise in the population of horticulturalestate workers and their dependents, to 250,000.The most significant impact of this growing agricultural intensificationwas the abstraction of water from the lake, groundwaterand rivers. No doubt, smallholder use of water higher in the catchmentalso increased, but this was ‘invisible’ to journalists and othervisitors. Scientific studies in the 1990s showed the abstractionsfrom the catchment to result in fluctuations of the lake 2-3 metresbelow its natural levels. The most visible and ecologically damagingconsequence of this was the disappearance of the fringing papyrusaround the lake. Stranded on dry land, large animals like buffalo andcattle were able to knock down the plants’ heads and eat them. Thetracks they made enabled smaller animals to follow and graze anyregrowth, so the swamps were progressively eliminated.The loss of the fringing swamps meant that the incoming rivers,heavy with sediment from inappropriate farming upstream,discharged their load directly into the lake instead turning it intonew swamp plant growth which would release nutrients slowly. Itbecame clear that the lake – browner in colour, with floating matsof exotic plants and an edge no longer protected by papyrus – wasin urgent need of careful management and restoration.Stumbling conservation initiativesAs the century drew to a close, the most important issue for Naivashawas the increasing water use by the rapidly-growing industry ofcommercial flower and vegetable farming for export. Demand forfresh water was intense, not only for intensive horticultural irriga-tion (about two thirds of the demand), but also in theOlkaria Geothermal Power Station, which generatesaround 15 per cent of Kenya’s power and is the largestsingle user of lake water.It was widely believed that the lake was over-abstractedbecause by the middle of the first decade of this century,there was no overall monitoring of abstractions –although the major commercial abstractions, beingimportant sources of revenue for the Water ResourceManagement Authority (WRMA), were subject to scrutiny.While the Government of Kenya had created aNational Environmental Management Authority under the1999 Environmental Management and Coordination Act,and the WRMA through the 2002 Water Act, enforcementof regulations proved to be weak. Fuelled by media articlesin Kenya and the UK, conservation agencies and thepublic perceived two growing threats to the lake and itsbiodiversity: human population growth leading to physicalpressure on the shores, and untreated wastewater flowinginto the lake from industries and settlements.The Lake Naivasha Riparian Association (LNRA), thegroup representing lakeside landowners, had produced aManagement Plan, which formed the basis of the declarationof the site as a Ramsar Wetland of InternationalImportance, in 1995. This Plan was approved by theKenyan Government and officially gazetted in 2004under the 1999 Environment Act, resulting in the formationof a dedicated management committee. However,many people (including pastoralists, smallholder farmersand residents of Naivasha’s informal settlements), whoselivelihoods depend on the ecosystem services of the lake,were excluded from the consultation process and fromrepresentation on the committee. A temporary coalitionof pastoralists lodged a successful court injunction againstImage:Nic PaciniDistributing trees to farmers, who are encouraged to grow trees and terrace their land to arrest erosion[ 257 ]